Ragnarok Launches, Gears of War Adaptation Announced & Gaming Journalism is DEAD (TWIG 12)

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And welcome back to the Lambency show. I am Lambency, joined here by Vex Electronica, who is frozen in absolute fear. Okay, there we go. We got her moving again. She still lives.

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She exists. I think I know what I got to do. Okay, we move this over here. It might just be by shitty internet, to be honest. No, I could very well be the way I have it set up.

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Okay.

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Yeah, I think I'm not sure. Okay, well, we'll make do with what we got. So this is the first stream on his new PC. I've got so many ports to work with now.

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Welcome back to this weekend gaming. How's your week been so far, Becks? I'm going to be honest, this is a tough week. This was a very tough week. But I'm still here.

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I'm hanging in. I am thankful that I have this podcast because it is not only a wonderful distraction, but I'm, like, literally just covering it in all of my creative juices.

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But how's your week been? Well, I've just been busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. I've literally just been non stop, either working or working on the back end this week because, you know, it's like every single week I hit you up like, hey, Vex, this is what I've done to the site. And you're like, really? Again, every week?

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But it's like every other day at this point. So, first of all, we changed the way the text looks on the site, which, as you can see through the actual screen right now, it looks a lot more clean and more legible for everyone to read. We have added a new tech writer in Taliaco, which you'll see, he's this handsome little cat right here. And we're preparing ourselves for a whole bunch more content to provide you guys better value. Then you add in the fact, you know, I probably should just do this real quick.

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Then you add in the fact that I added a new computer. So this is the first stream on the brand new computer which allows me to actually show my not so smiling face.

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I'm the guy behind the scenes. I still have about, I'd say, three to five USB ports still available to mess around with. So fun. We also have moved our podcast hosting platform from where we had it before to our new one, which should not affect anyone here at all. But it was a pain.

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It was an absolute pain. I can only imagine. How much time did you spend, like, setting that new computer up? I don't want to talk about that. Okay.

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It was that long, then let's just leave it at that. Listen, I spent like, the first day trying to figure out why I couldn't get the monitors to work. I can only get one monitor to work. Actually. No, I couldn't even get one monitor to work.

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And then I realized I was plugging them into the wrong spot. You know your camera is up on the stream, right? I mean, that's kind of why I have it on. Oh, sorry, I didn't notice. Seriously, it was a long week.

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My brain is here and there. I'm just thinking about I started writing a recap for everything I've played this year so far. FYI, I'm on my 13th game of this year so far and I still hope to play four more before the year ends. So it's going to be a pretty long recap. But I have started putting that together on the website.

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If I may briefly plug myself here. I did post a review for Plague Tale Requiem on the website in the very wee hours of today. So there's some minor spoilers in there, but they're not terribly bad. The only spoilers that I put in there kind of allude to what influences the plot, but solid, solid game. I stayed up till 04:00 A.m.

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On Tuesday because I was just like, just play two chapters and go to bed. And then I was like, no, we're wearing this for the long haul. So I finished it. It is amazing. It definitely has Game of the Year potential because I know we have the Game of the Year awards announcing their nominees tomorrow morning.

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I hope Plagued Requiem is in some of those categories. I actually also hope Scorn is in a handful of those categories too. Just for sound design, if anything, because that was stellar in there. So yeah, if you're interested in checking out my review for a Plague Tale Requiem, you can visit www, dot the lambdaco.com and it is under our articles tab. It will be the first one that shows up.

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If it isn't, you actually do have the option to filter it by a type of article and it's under our game reviews.

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I was wondering why everything seems so slow, but if you look at my upload speed right now, my computer is juggling. Oh my goodness.

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I like how my download speed I like how my upload speed is now higher than my download speed, which this is not accurate at all. Still doing better than I am in still doing better. I am struggling for some reason on the stream itself. Let's see here. Try this again.

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It's got to be a mistake, right? Come on. Maybe it's not. I think my Canadianness is leaking over the Internet to you and now you're experiencing my Canadianness. It's very possible.

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It's all right. We knew we'd have some technical difficulties, so on and so forth when we started this. It very well could be just because I'm eating up a lot of that wall streaming. Possibly very popular. Anyways, well, that's that.

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So why don't we launch into the actual show? Yes, we got a lot to COVID today. I'm going to start off with everybody's favorite LSTAR, or actually L star's parent company, take Two. So Take Two had another investor call earlier this week. Not a whole lot was revealed in it.

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I'm going to be honest when it comes to like upcoming releases and everything like that. I will highlight a couple of the big things for their two biggest IPS, the Grand Theft Auto series and the Red Dead Redemption series. Also, I don't know which videos you switched out, but most of the videos that will be playing in the background of the stream are all courtesy of Gamers little playground over on YouTube. I might as well just reach out to this guy with the exception of God of War Ragnarok and Final Fantasy XVI. Okay, so I might as well just reach out to this guy and be like, yo, can I just keep promoting you on our podcast at this point because your footage is just great.

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So in terms of GTA Five news at least, that installment in the series has officially passed over 170 units sold. 170,000,000 units sold as of this past quarter. Now, surprisingly, in the first time since the game released over ten years ago now, sales have actually slowed down and in the last quarter, take Two only sold a million copies of GTA Five. I know I say only a million, but that's impressive by any standard in single in just a three month span alone, right? There was no news about GTA Six.

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I know there's been a lot of speculation, especially now that the Vice City anniversary just passed as well, but I don't think we're going to be getting any GTA reveals this year. And if anything, the leak that happened back in September probably is holding that back. In response to that, CEO Strauss Zelnick did mention that it was quite unfortunate the leak happened, but it has not hindered development of GTA Six at all. Now, in terms of Red Dead Redemption Two, there is actually some interesting news there because that game also sold an additional 1 million copies in the last quarter, which actually puts it down at the second best selling title in the US. Alone in the last five years.

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And there has been almost a tripling in player base for Red Dead Redemption Online despite All Star dropping support for the game back in September in favor of GTA Six. I mean, that's hopeful news, but it's not great news because we all know that they're not going to be putting the effort back into that game. There was also additional confirmation that Remedy Entertainment is working on a Maxpain One and Two rebaster collection. There's no official release window for that at all, but it is in the works, which is good news for Max Payne fans. Now, the biggest information to come out of this was the take to stop stock value, which had dropped 25% in the last quarter and actually dropped a further 17% to 18%, depending on which sources you look at after that investor call on Monday.

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So that brings the total stock value loss for just the 2022 2023 fiscal year for take two interactive -45% which is insane absolutely insane. When I did check the stock numbers just earlier today though. It looks like it's risen by just over 3%. So it is back up. But that's quite sad in a year to lose almost half of your stock value, right?

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They also did reveal their market value, which is projected to be $225,000,000,000 at the end of this fiscal year, which will end in March by the way, for those that are unsure. And there was also an interesting statistic revealed which the average age of the Take Two player remember that take Two Interactive owns about a dozen studios underneath them. The average age of their player base is 31, which makes a lot of sense to me considering a lot of those flagship IPS are IPS that came that reached their peak will say well over ten years ago. So that's not really a surprise there. Right now back to Strauss Zelnick, which earlier this week I realized Strauss is also the name of kind of one of the villains, not villains, but he has an antagonist in Red Dead Redemption Two I'm like.

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Was this intentional? Did Dan Hauser decided to just fuck with people before he left Rockstar? So he had some comments to say about the Activision Blizzard acquisition that's ongoing right now with Xbox as well as the Game Pass subscription model. So he was skeptical about the subscription model and actually agrees with Sony's opinion that it actually doesn't hold any value for developers to release a game on a subscription service day one. And he is so far the only company that we know of that is actually speaking out against this and siding kind of with Sony.

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He said, quote, I think the secondary skepticism was whether or not it made sense to offer frontline titles, day and date titles on a subscription service. I don't think that ever made sense. I still don't think it makes sense. I believe it's not becoming obvious. And that's just lost opportunity for the publisher.

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So I don't want to speak for my friend Phil, but our views remain unchanged. There probably is a subscription business that makes sense. It's a catalog business. It's probably best to aim at very avid consumers because those are the consumers who are interested in playing catalog titles and playing a whole bunch of different titles in a given month. I mean, I can see where he's coming from.

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And by all means if Xbox hadn't put out their subscription numbers a few weeks ago, sure I would agree with him. But the fact is that they are making a substantial profit from it now, even though some people say, oh, $3 billion is now $3 billion is quite a bit. And on top of that, there have been numerous developers, mainly indie developers, that have come out and said straight, we love to be part of the game Pass model because it has been shown to improve the player based on a lot of smaller titles, which is definitely where audiences need to go more. I think AAA is fizzling out and we need to give the little guys a little more credit. Now, to be fair, I get really tired of I personally believe Microtransactions can only be involved in games that aren't AAA titles.

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If I have to pay $70 for a game, and then it's not even a complete game, you want me to spend another 150 to 200 minimum in order to get the full experience, that's bullshit. I agree with you. $100. I was looking at prices for the new Call of Duty. If you don't notice on Twitter, I'm entering, like, contest after contest because I don't want to drop $80 plus tax.

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But I was like, there's a version that's $10 more, and it's literally only $10 more for like, five cosmetic skins. Sounds about right. I'm just like, Bro, this is ridiculous. Even like the day one edition of Callisto Protocol, same thing. It's $10 more and all I'm getting is a couple skins.

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That's it. Like, these AAA titles are really milking the shit at this point, right? But speaking of activation, Blizzard, we were talking about how they milk it and stuff, and all I'm looking at is here's the thing with Game Pass and everything. I don't mind games going on Game Pass because I'm more likely to spend money on a game that I didn't spend money on to receive. But if I'm sitting here dropping AAA prices and you want to shove Microdor transactions down my throat no, see, this is exactly why a couple of years back, I remember the whole battlefront to drama that happen.

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That's why it happened. You sat here and made us pay full price for a game and then told us that if we want because I remember I remember vividly because I was one of the people who had the game. You sat here and told us that it was still possible to get all the other characters we want if we want to and stuff. Or we could just purchase loop crates and get a chance to get it anyways significantly faster. And there were people who did the math.

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If you wanted to get Darth Vader, you had to do close to 1000 hours of playing or something like that in order to unlock them. Whereas if you just spent some money, you can get them within an hour. And that was probably the point. That was by design. And, you know, they did it by design.

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A design triple A title. All, let's smoke this. Exactly. And of course, their statement turned out, they're like, oh, we think it was a reasonable amount and stuff, that we didn't think it was too much of a grind. Blah, blah.

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No, you knew it was too much of a grind. You did it on purpose. You specifically put it at that amount to make it so that we would want to spend money, which then a couple of years later, you were trying to defend even further by saying that it wasn't gambling. Oh, it's gambling. Yeah.

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And this is why I said last week, when we got the announcement that now EA has three Marvel titles in development, that was a dumb smart move, because people will flesh out the money easily for a Marvel title, even if they for stupid things like paying for a character. So for on a money side, it was a smart move by Marvel critical reception or like, positive notes? Probably not know at least that's yet to be seen. Right, so speaking of the ABK acquisition, Bethesda, which is another, which is now owned by Xbox, was also heavy in the news this past week, actually overdue Maternal, which came out a couple of years ago now. So, two years after its release, there's been controversy regarding Doom Eternal soundtrack mixing, which is highlighted in a behind the scenes conflict between the games developers and composer Mitt Gordon.

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So MC Gordon decided to finally make a post online through a website called Median, where basically he detailed all of the allegations that he had against ID Software, who was the developer under Bethesda that made the du maternal game, as well as kind of the abusive presence that was there throughout his work on the score and the original soundtrack. So Gordon's issues were first highlighted back in 2020, when the Doom Eternal soundtrack was released alongside the collector's editions, and fans noted that there were discrepancies in the sound of mixing between the soundtrack and the same piece in Doom 2016. At the time, Gordon pointed out on social media that he didn't mix the tracks in question, leading Doom Eternal executive producer Marty Stratton to issue a public statement about Gordon's work on the game. In his account, it included multiple concerns that Gordon wouldn't be able to deliver his promised work on time and ended that deliverance by noting that it would likely wouldn't be working together again. Now, in response, Gordon kind of went into quite a bit of detail about exactly what happened here.

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So he described being given tight deadlines for the final versions of his promised musical tracks. He said that despite this, he lacked a lot of direction as to what kind of levels or environments those tracks were meant for and there are so many development changes and missed milestones that he could never keep up to date with the deadlines they had. He also claims that there was proposed alternative scheduling from management that would allow him to write broader reusable themes first that could then be shaped into specific final versions. As you know, the production hammered itself out and this resulted in severe crunch for him as he worked at late nights finalizing music for levels that hadn't even been designed yet and would later be thrown out of the editing room once everything was finished. This was all punctuated further by very slow communication from management, him being cut out of meetings about the music, and increasing authorization from the rest of the development team as well.

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Gordon complained of multiple pay issues over his time working on Doom Eternal, including at least one attempt to deny payment because ID software had allegedly changed their mind and no longer wanted to use the music. He provided with other delays or deferrals of ontime payment outside of that issue. At one point he claimed that he went unpaid for eleven months, which is absolutely insane to me. He also claimed that It software announced the aforementioned Doom Eternal OSC without ever having made a deal with him to produce one, ignored his attempts to make a deal. He eventually approached Bethesda directly for a deal and through multiple communication and contract delays, he got one for twelve songs, which he crunched to complete on time.

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He went on to say that Stratton once again got involved in these negotiations, adding additional pressure to finish quickly and revealing that audio designer Chad Mossholder had been working on an alternative OST for months. While Gordon was at the end of this entire statement, he said that he loves the Doom franchise, but when he left it was like breaking up with a toxic girlfriend. Essentially, Bethesda was the most toxic client he had ever worked with. This comes as no surprise since Bethesda has been under quite a bit of fire prior to their Microsoft acquisition over just kind of their workplace culture in general. And you know, crunch has been a thing that we've seen across multiple Triple A studios on top of that.

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So this is really no new news here, right? It's very sad that they're doing this to creative talents though, and it's not limited to just voice actors like we've seen. So in continuation to this now, since we're on the topic of Microsoft anyways, the EU Commission did release a statement earlier this week on November 8, as they were they had originally planned to. Anyways, in regards to the Activision Blizzard requirement, they have officially opened an in depth investigation specifically centered around the concern that the proposed acquisition may reduce competition in the markets for the distribution of console and PCs and for PC operating systems. So the specific points that they outline in this statement that they put out basically was that it suggests Microsoft may have the ability, as well as the potential economic incentive to engage in the foreclosure strategies.

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Visa. Visa microsoft revival distributors of console video games such as preventing these companies from distributing Activision Blizzard video games on other consoles or degrading the terms and conditions for their use or access to these games. Second, when it comes to multi game subscription services and or cloud gaming streaming services, the Commission's concerns that through this acquisition, microsoft may foreclose access to the detriment of its rival distributors of console and PC video games that offer the similar or same services. Such foreclosure strategies could reduce the competition in markets for the distribution of these games, leading to higher prices, lower quality, and less innovation for console game distributors, which may in turn be passed on to the customers. And then finally, they had concerns that the proposed acquisition may reduce in competition on the market for PC.

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In particular, they're concerned that Microsoft may reduce the ability of rival providers of PC operating systems to compete with Microsoft operating system Windows by combining Activision Blizzards games and Microsoft distribution of games via cloud gaming streaming to Windows. Again, I can see some of the very valid criticisms there. In all honesty, I can see the worry. And I understand that people are still very skeptical of Still Spencer, even though he said, I think six or seven times now that Call of Duty specifically will not be Xbox exclusive again, who knows that he'll change his mind on that? It wouldn't be the first time.

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But it seems like all of that crying that Sony has been doing is hit hard. Like it's hitting hard for the EU in particular, despite two other authorities being just like, no, it'll be fine. There's going to be no issue with competition. So when the same day this release actually, there was a guy who actually works at the EU commission, he is a regulator, Ricardo Cardoza. He decided to go to Twitter and posted something completely, not even tone deaf, just full of bias.

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He said, quote, the commission is working to ensure that you will still be able to play Call of Duty on other consoles, including my PlayStation. Also on our to do list, update stock pictures. These gamers have wired controllers where his Xbox and PlayStation have had wireless one since about 2006. So rightfully so. He received a lot of flack for this because his pure bias like showing through, especially with the my PlayStation part.

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But then the EU commission did come out and say, is this guy's personal account? I don't know why he's making it seem like he's working on this deal. He's not. He has nothing to do with this. He just works at our company.

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I don't know what's your take on this, lab, and see, I think he got a little too big for his bridges. But I also do agree. I get why Xbox users are trying to laugh at PlayStation and PlayStation fanboys, so on and so forth, but the Xbox users have always had the same rich work over and over again. PlayStation has had all these exclusive. It's time for us to have exclusive.

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First of all, PlayStation has paid for this exclusive. Second of all, those exclusives were made. When it comes to exclusive games, I was talking about exclusive for DLCs and inside games. But as far as exclusive for games, they had their own studios to do that. Xbox on the other hand, is just buying big studios that already have established themselves, so on and so forth.

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And let's say they don't go back on Phil Spencer's word, because Phil Spencer's word is a terrible word to go by, because Phil Spencer is time and again has backtracked on his own word. We've seen him do a time and again. But as far as Call of Duty staying on PlayStation, let's say that stays the same. Here's the thing. PlayStation is not going to pay for exclusive Call of Duty features for PlayStation users.

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If they have to pay Xbox, and Xbox is going to get those exclusives for free. That's also another thing people aren't really looking into is you have this established franchise that now they don't have to pay for exclusivity that PlayStation paid for, which, mind you, people want to complain about, like PlayStation having all these exclusive games and exclusive DLCs for them. PlayStation paid money for those, you know what I mean? They paid these studios every single time. And yeah, I get it, you bought the studio.

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But that goes right back into competition, as we've discussed before, as they're buying up studios after studios. And Sony now, I believe, is just following an Xbox footstep and trying to do the same. But I'm really not liking all these studios going into one giant company over and over and over again, because it takes away the ability of people wanting to compete with each other and make a quality product and stuff. So if it goes down to because it's looking like it's going to go down to like three studios, you know what I mean, like it's going to be like three companies that own everything. And when that happens, here's the thing.

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All they have to do is talk to each other to make sure that nothing ever goes below a certain price and nothing goes above a certain price. So they're all on the same playing field. They don't have to worry about competition. We've seen this happen at other things. I'll give you a perfect industry, all right?

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I don't know how it is worldwide, but in the US. When it comes to wireless providers, like who gives you your internet, technically, legally speaking, any wireless company can go into any area and give you wireless coverage, but they don't. They all go by certain territories that they have preagreed with all the other companies. And the reason why they do this is so that way customers do not have a choice about who they pay for their internet, so they can get reliable internet at an affordable price. And whoever has that area can charge whatever the hell they want.

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So, for example, in my area, it's comcastefinity, all right? And every single year they raise our price over and over and over again, but they give us less for what we pay for it. And it's funny because I look at it, I think we're paying like $120 a month right now, but I can get a plan like say we were to cancel right now and go under someone else's name and have it re hooked up here. I can go get a plan for about $25 from them. That gives me four times better service.

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So in other words, they hook you with a good price, but then as you stay with them, oh yeah, we're just going to keep bumping the price and lowering your service. And I bring up that industry to bring up the fact that that's going to happen in the gaming world at the studios. If it goes down to a couple of businesses on every studio, there's going to be no incentive for them to want to step on each other's toes because they can all get rich together. You know what I mean? I agree with you, and this is a point that I've made before too, on this podcast is I also don't like the idea of everyone being bought up and just becoming large conglomerates.

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I think it will end up I mean, some studios have said otherwise, right? Like Bungie right now, their acquisition by Sony, they still have all creative control, but who knows if that will change, right? And under Microsoft, I can't remember which, it might have been Bethesda that said it, but they said that they have all creative control as well. But my concern is always that the second you get all these people under the umbrella, then the bigwigs are the one that start controlling where workers are delegated and whatnot and how they want their games to turn out. So I'm just worried about what this will mean for creativity in the industry more than anything.

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But regardless of that, it looks like Activision CEO Bobby Kotik is actually pretty optimistic about this. He actually sent out a memo to Activision Blizzard staff on November 8 after this ruling had been put out. And Bloomberg reported, at first he said, quote in the memo, I wanted to take a moment out of our successful busy launch season to provide an update on our progress towards the completion of our merger with Microsoft. With increased competition globally from companies with huge talent pools and resources, becoming part of a company with access to talent around the world will help us fulfill thousands of open positions we will have over the next few years. We have been and will be in fierce competition to attract and retain the talent we need to create content that will meet the demands of our growing audiences.

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Being a part of Microsoft will help us better realize our ambitions and satisfy the high standards of our audiences. As we said when we announced this merger, this is a long process. You've already received approvals from countries including Brazil. After a close review of the transaction, the Brazilian authority arrived at the understanding that we operate in a highly dynamic and competitive industry. And that the merger will not harm competition in any way.

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The rest of the memo, it is longer, just goes on to detail what specific terms mean in more of like a legal sense. But to me, this memo reads two ways. One, they're very confident it will go through, and it's more or less confirmed that will go through. And two, perhaps internally in Activision Blizzard, there might be some concern from employees about what will happen postacquisition, especially with the recent news that Microsoft had laid off about 1% of its employees globally. Right.

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So maybe there's some internal struggles going on here where people are concerned about what's going to happen to them come the spring of next year. Right. So moving along, there was a big game launch that happened this past Tuesday. God of War Ragnarok came out on the video is courtesy of Game Clips. This is actually all cutscenes of God of War Ragnarok, and I'm going to be right back while you continue.

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Okay, so I guess spoiler alert just in case you guys don't want to see this. Yes. God of war Ragnarok were launched on the PS Four and PS Five earlier this week. It is still just being led by some very positive critical response, which is great. There were some issues, though, that were encountered.

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So several people actually came to Twitter and actually ended up becoming more of a common thing. But there were a lot of collectors editions that shipped out that either they were missing things, that they were missing a disk or they were missing a code, or they had doubles of DLC codes and no gain code. So the collector's edition, which was priced at $200 USD, was just missing the biggest thing that was supposed to come with it. Right. So a couple of retailers like Target and Best Buy actually did offer refunds for people that did have these issues.

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However, at the time that these articles and things all came out, santa Monica Studios had not commented, probably because they don't want to refund it fully. And even some of these third party retailers that were selling it, if they refunded it, they couldn't provide another one because usually they limit the shipment of these things. And all they had left were the I think it was like $320 ones that had the replica of Thor's hammer in it right, because there were different tiers of collectors editions. So that was pretty sad news, especially since even earlier this year when the last of us had a rerelease, there was a similar issue happening there too, where a lot of the packaging was damaged on things and which ended up in some people getting cracked or broken disks upon launch. Right, and other kind of bad news about God of War Ragnarok.

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So speaking to GQ, UK game director Eric Williams did an interview and he talked about how the development team wasn't exactly feeling positive about Ragnarok during the final months of development, but also wanted to reinforce that things worked out in the end. He said, quote, when you work with people that are the apex of what they do, you're going to get magic. It came from a room with those people. All I could say to them was, thank you. They're freaking out.

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Three months ago, holy crap, the game's not good. What are we going to do? William said, I can't even imagine how they feel today. I wish I had a time machine to go back and feel like that. Corey Belrock, who directed sorry, the 2018 God of War game, he acted as a producer on this one and said that the final stages he reaffirmed this as well, saying that the final stages of game development were very hectic and that by the end of development it kind of felt like riding a horse.

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Quote, when the horse decides it wants to run, it's just going to start going. You feel like you have no control and you're just holding on to it. So this game was under development for over four years before it launched earlier this week. It's predecessor back in 2018, sold more than 23 million copies. I think it's going to smash that record no problem, especially with the holiday season, as well as the fact that PlayStation Five bundles are starting to show up and they're all being bundled with Ragnarok.

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But I'm kind of seeing what the feedback is on Twitter and Unsurprisingly. Whenever a God of War game comes out, the response is always phenomenal, right? People love the franchise. The franchise generally can do no wrong. But I'm seeing a lot of people give a bit of a it's either amazing or it's bland.

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There's no in between I'm seeing on this game at all. And the people that are kind of noting that it's a bit bland is that it seems like a lot of the sequences in the game are kind of drawn out and there's a lot of instances in the plot and character development that seem almost fruitless once they finish the game. So it's been quite interesting to see that mix come out because just last week when all the early reviews are coming out, it was nothing but good things about this game, right? There was one more kind of negative thing which will actually lead me into another negative thing. So I'm sorry, god of work pants, but on launch day, IGN changed their logo to be God of War themed and a lot of people were quick to notice it because it was the first time they'd ever seen a major game reporting agency kind of do this.

[00:36:34]
And a lot of people were a little worried because this kind of gave a little more ammunition to the fact that it's been long known that Sony has been very particular about who they give early access codes to and which reviews they accept as early access. There's a guy that did a review for the 2018 God of war before released, and even then once he had submitted it for review, sony essentially deleted the video that he made on it or just didn't accept it because it didn't meet the standards that they were expecting in the type of the review they wanted. Right? And after that, I can't remember what his name is, but he was a very prominent gaming journalist. But after that he found that Sony stopped giving him early access code to a lot of their more triple A development.

[00:37:22]
Right. And to kind of add more flame to this fire, there is another video game kind of news publisher called Survivor, which I recommend checking out the website. It's S-T-E-V-I-V-O-R. They do game reviews on both hardware and actual physical games on a range of different consoles. He's a very unbiased reviewer too, so if you want a more balanced opinion, the website is great.

[00:37:51]
But he was supposed to get an early access code from Sony Australia or PlayStation Australia for grand tourism seven. And essentially what it boil down to was that Sony PlayStation first party reviews will not be released in any prelaunch window and instead will become available in the period after the title has launched.

[00:38:15]
They weren't able to get an access code at all. Right, so this is hailed of April 2022. Sony interactive Australia and his contracted PR agency poem only responded to two attempts at communication by survivor. One was to acknowledge an email was sent about horizon forbidden west, which was another game that they had hoped to review prelaunch. And the other stated that PlayStation Australia was, quote, unable to accommodate a request for a grandmother seven code.

[00:38:47]
Further, emails asking for additional comment word nor phone calls were either rang out or diverted to voicemail were never returned. And text messages including offered to connect PlayStation Australia with a contact other than the author were not replied apart from automated Android read receipts.

[00:39:05]
Again, just adding more fuel to the fire that Sony is very selective about who it wants reviewing its games. I cannot recall any instances of Xbox doing this, but honestly, I would be surprised if I've done it. They're just more hush hush about it seems. Okay, but then again, that goes back to user base, as we've spoken before about how there's more places and users than there is Xbox, but studios in particular are very particular about who reviews it and they don't like bad reviews. And here's my thing, I don't like that companies do this and stuff.

[00:39:38]
Because here's the thing, if you don't want a bad review, here's an idea. How about you hire these people that you know are going to be honest with you and instead of having them do a review, have them actually review it specifically for you, for things you can work on before it's released. You know what I mean? It doesn't even have to be that the review goes out, so on and so forth. It could be criticism for you to improve your game before the launch, and you just pay them for the criticism.

[00:40:08]
So that way you don't get the criticism when the game actually comes out. Because here's the thing. You can hide all you want, but at the end of the day, when the game comes out, if the game shit, the game shit. But the difference is you get all those positive ones before. Because let's face it, a lot of the people there are a fair amount of people that don't care if the game enters them.

[00:40:28]
They'll play it regardless of review. But much like movies, a movie that receives a lot of positive reviews gets a lot more people in the theaters paying money for it. And it's the same thing with games, right? It's unfortunate, but it is. You should probably have a good enough game that doesn't get critically reviewed by someone who is honest and they don't like it because X and X, you know what I mean?

[00:40:52]
Exactly. Make a good fucking game and you won't have to deal with all this to switch it up a little bit and stuff. I'm still laughing at the fact that I know this is the movie industry, but did you see the guy who was talking about how the new Black Panther movie was as good as Godfather?

[00:41:15]
I'm over here laughing because your sales aren't even as good as your last two Marvel movies, which did historically awful. You're comparing it to one of the best movies of all time. I think I responded to that. Someone else who posted on Twitter, and I was like, this is what happens when you give participation trophies. Trophies like your ego inflates to that point.

[00:41:43]
I haven't seen Wakanda forever, so I'm going to stay as neutral as I can with it. But I can guarantee you there is never going to be a Marvel movie that matches up to the quality both in content and production of The Godfather. Like, just take those two even compares crazy. And then there's the you know, I don't know if you saw it. I know it's a little bit different, but did you see the whole Twitter situation?

[00:42:09]
What they're crying about now? What are they crying about now? Okay, so Twitter employees are now crying because Elon Musk got rid of free lunches, all right? Now, mind you, if you've seen the videos of the lunches they were being provided, we're talking about like lobster and pretty much top of the line. Like they're getting free, basically, meals of, like, gourmet lunches.

[00:42:35]
Gourmet lunches, all right? And I looked up the average salary of a Twitter employee, right? And we're talking like 90 to year. So I actually put out a response to it. Hold on.

[00:42:48]
I'm going to pull it up right now. Not on the stream. I'm just going to read my actual response, okay? You know my personality. All right.

[00:42:57]
Yeah. Someone goes, mr. Musk plans to begin making employees pay for lunch, which have been free at the company cafeteria. Of course, more people had even crappier takes after that. I go, the horror of having to get paid more than your average person and having to check snotes.

[00:43:16]
Bring your own lunch.

[00:43:20]
Come on. No wonder anyone in our age, like, there's so many people in our age group that don't know how to fucking cook because they get handouts like this. Or they just order Uber eats for everything.

[00:43:35]
Ninety k a year. I mean, even after taxes, we're still talking about you're getting like, 60K. If you can't live off of bring your own lunch, then you don't know how to handle money at all. Right? There's a lot of companies that do.

[00:43:51]
Facebook does that as well. LinkedIn does it know they get bonuses and free stocks. Exactly. And here's the thing. Exactly.

[00:44:01]
If you're smart and you don't trust a Twitter stock, if you're getting all that stock money, here's the thing, sell some of it, right, and turn around and invest it in what you want to invest in. Me, personally, I would sell the Twitter stock and invested in dividend stocks. Why? Because I'm going to pay 90,000 a year from Twitter, yet now I'm getting paid another 900 a year in dividends. You know what I mean?

[00:44:25]
There you go. Right? So in other Sony news, a little bit of a rumor was floating around to you. There is some internal documentation over at Sony that implies that a PlayStation Five slim might be coming in the spring of next year and will hit shelves or sorry, we'll start development in the spring of next year and then hit shelves by September 2023. So I guess keep your eye out on an announcement for that.

[00:44:52]
It's about the time usually two to three year mark is when they end up doing like the slim or updated version. So that makes sense to me. But we'll be keeping an eye out for that regardless. Now, switching gears.

[00:45:08]
There we go. Gears of War made quite a few headlines as well earlier this year, and I'm getting flashbacks. So that crossover mistake I made a couple of months ago, gears of War Ragnarok, I wish I was flipped because I was just like, really? Really? Did you really just say Gears of War ragnarok?

[00:45:29]
And I did it like three times, too. I know. I was like, I can't believe it. Not once, not twice, but three times. You called a Gears of War ragnarok vex.

[00:45:38]
There you go. That's why to be fair, that actually sounds like it would be a dope game, like a cross between Gears of War and God of War Ragnarok. Or just God of war in general? Imagine those two combining. I'm a genius when I don't even try, but this is why, like in the Outlier summary for today's podcast, I very explicitly wrote out God of War, the Years of War, so I wouldn't fuck up again.

[00:46:12]
So earlier this week, on November 7, the official Netflix account tweeted, quote, Years of War was released 16 years ago today. And to mark the occasion, Netflix has partnered with the coalition, which is the developer behind Gears of War, to adapt the Gears of War video game saga into a live action feature film, followed by an adult animated series with the potential for more stories to follow. Here's the thing. Of all the ones you can continue in a second, of all the ones that you do, a live action of Years of War might actually be possible. It is 100% possible.

[00:46:53]
I've seen a lot of them try to do it, and it's like the whole story. There's no human characters and you're doing a live action, right? It's kind of hard to do. Hold on. We'll touch on that in just a moment.

[00:47:06]
Right, so the series creator Cliff Blasinsky, who spoke with IG and recently responded by tweeting, oh, shit as well. Dave Bautista, who is best known for his role as tracks in the Guardians of the Galaxy Series, actually tweeted out in response. Are we talking about the same Dave Latissa? What does he look like? Does he have a gigantic tattoo on his back?

[00:47:32]
He's a big bulky guy, bald head dude. Dave Latissa used to rental in the WWE as well. He's a former resident. He's best known for WWE, not what you just said. Trust me.

[00:47:44]
Okay, well, for those of us I don't even know, he did the other thing.

[00:47:50]
For those of us that don't watch wrestling, I haven't watched it in over a decade. But Dave Bautista, he actually tweeted in response to this is a little clip of him putting on the Gears armor. And in the tweet, he said, quote, I can't make this any easier, and tagged Netflix and Gears of War in it as well. Now, Dave Padista actually has not been very shy in first of all his love for the Gears of War franchise and the fact that he has also been on kind of a continuous journey to bring it to the screen for the better part of two decades now, he's described just being constantly attached to play marcus Phoenix has been kind of a dream for him, and he's just waiting for it to kind of take off. Back in 2018, when he was talking to GameSpot, actually, he said that he considered playing Marcus Phoenix, he considered a dream role.

[00:48:47]
So I just repeated myself. So I think a lot of people think he's a dreamcast for it as well. Just the fact that he's a big fan compared to as well with the fact that he looks quite a bit like the lead protagonist, Marcus Phoenix. Dave Bautista. It's Bautista.

[00:49:07]
I only know because he was big in wrestling for a long time. Right? I know. But clearly if he can act in the WWE and the way he was able to get people to either side with him or not, because he did turns between being the good guy and the bad guy and he was very convincing and stuff. Now, if he could get that to translate over into a live action and stuff, this might be a live action I might be interested in seeing.

[00:49:38]
And I'm not even a Gears of War guy and it's not him that would bring me to it and stuff. It would be his passion for the game combined with the fact that I know he has some acting jobs. So if he can at least transfer the skills over now, am I saying he's a top tier actor? No, not at all and stuff. But with his passion for it, combined with the fact that he has some acting skills, it could really bring out the story itself.

[00:50:08]
Well, even then, because it doesn't look like this, they said there's the potential for more stories. Right? But let's assume that this is just one live action feature film. In all honesty, if you play the Gears of War franchise, it's more action than anything else. The story itself is very like Lukewarm in terms of depth, but there is a lot of lore behind it which you can find outside of the series.

[00:50:33]
But just the fact that you just need the action element spot on. More than anything, I think he's a good fit. My only issue with this is Netflix, first of all. Secondly, with what has happened with Henry Cavill and the witcher staff writers, right. Remember, we covered a couple weeks ago, the witcher staff writers hated the source material and that was reflected very much in the series.

[00:50:58]
And a lot more people are thinking that was more the reason for Cavill leaving than Superman at this point now. But as long as they put writers on there that understand and respect the source material, I don't see them doing any wrong. In terms of the animated series. I think Netflix has been on a great streak with those. I haven't seen an animated series from them that I didn't like so far.

[00:51:21]
So they are hitting some right notes there and that gives an opportunity for them to really explore more of the lore with an animated series. So don't fuck this up, Netflix. This is really easy. You fucked up the witcher. You hella fucked up Resident Evil.

[00:51:35]
There's literally no reason for you to fuck this up. This is the easiest thing to adapt into TV or a movie. Sorry. I did find some interesting articles, though, which again, lead to this overall theme that is just following this podcast, which there is an insane amount of bias in gaming journalism. And if it's all bias, it's clearly people that have been paid to write certain things.

[00:52:02]
But I found this article on IGN and I pulled a quote out of this and I rolled my eyes so hard of this quote. Netflix has found success with adaptations of properties such as Resident Evil and Castlevania, though the overall reviews have been mixed. Xbox has found more mixed success with its own properties with Halo being met with middling reviews and Tepid fan reaction. And all I'm fucking thinking is, everyone, where was the success with that Resident Evil series? Nobody liked it.

[00:52:33]
I don't remember any of those that were just listed being particularly liked. Like I don't remember. Sick of one. Oh my goodness. Castlevania, the animated series.

[00:52:46]
Definitely. You gotta check it out. It's actually phenomenal. Right? Well, then outside of Castlevania, all of them can't have done that.

[00:52:57]
Well, we know what happened with the Resident Evil. That's what I mean. Where was the success with nobody liked it. That's why it got canceled two weeks after it launched. Right?

[00:53:10]
And like with Halo, halo was just I've watched clips of that Halo show and I've read the summaries of what is happening and I'm just like, how the why? How did you fuck. I feel like it was just another one of those I hate the source material. Here's a dude in space. Let's just write this and throw our own trash into it.

[00:53:34]
Anyways, I don't want to get into that. But it's not hard to mess up video game adaptations. It's literally all laid out there for you. There is no research you have to do other than play a fucking game. That's it, right?

[00:53:50]
Moving along, though, final Fantasy was in the news again this week. Remember last week? I have things to say about this. And you know, I have things to say about this. So we have Final Fantasy 16 playing in the background while we go through this.

[00:54:05]
But remember last week, the creative director for the franchise was in the news because he was like, we don't care about diversity like that. We care more that our characters have depth and personality and stand for meaningful things more than the color of their skin. And most sane people like myself and Laymancy over here were like, that's amazing. That's why you should be idolizing either people fictional or non fictional. Right?

[00:54:34]
So actually, I have these articles in order, so I'm going to do the second one first and then come back. There was an article that showed up on Kotaku earlier this week, which, I mean, that should tell you basically the shit show of the gaming world. I don't even know how people even watch or listen to them at all at this point. It's just a propaganda machine at this point. But there is a journalist named CC Jiang over there who actually lost her shit basically over this and wrote an entire blog dedicated to it about just how the creative director is completely wrong and how he is racist as a result, too.

[00:55:14]
A couple of the highlights I picked out of this. It was a really hard read, man. Let me phrase that for you. Highlights. I think you mean low light.

[00:55:24]
Yeah, low lights. Here's the garbage I was able to pick out of this dump. Basically, they accused Square Enix of racism because apparently, according to Jiang, devs think that Asiana people do not understand other races exist, and therefore Asian creators can't develop media literacy about racism even if they themselves experience racism. The second one is that race is an important theme to any artist who wants to represent the full range of human experience, regardless of whether they're American or Japanese. The third is that Final fantasy?

[00:56:03]
What's XDI is that 16. Okay, Final Fantasy 16. Developers are extremely sensitive to racial and cultural differences outside of Japan in their choice to use English voice actors for an ancient European world. The fourth is that inclusivity, you know, diversity and whatnot should be evaluated as seriously as we might consider technical elements such as graph, graphics, cinematography, or the responsiveness of the controls. And the last point, which is we can't expect Japanese devs to understand race or racism are necessarily made in good faith.

[00:56:40]
The excuse that Japan is simply different seems to exist and to all other forms of oppression. And to close out this article, Jiang said, quote, white conservatives are terrified that they're losing hold on popular media. They're looking for their own utopia, a place that excludes women and minorities. For some white people, Japan is seen as an eternally unchanging conformist in traditional society where marginalized people know their place. Obviously, countries don't work like that, but gamer chads want Japan to be a safe space for all that SJW nonsense, regardless of what good JRPG as a genre or what actually makes good business sense.

[00:57:25]
I'm sure you notice this because I kind of like rage message to you on Twitter earlier this week about other things, but I can't with gaming journalists this week. I really can't. What happened? Did the money just start flowing? Did everyone just get brainwashed or just have, like a severe breakdown or something to sink to this level of a level?

[00:57:49]
Here's what happened. I'm going to tell you exactly what happened, all right? Okay. We had a whole bunch of people who got used to having handouts given to them and stuff, so they lived their life on a silver platter. But because they knew that anytime they face any hardship, they could turn around and blame racism, sexism, or any other form of ism and stuff, they've never been told no in their life and stuff.

[00:58:11]
So as soon as they're told no, immediately that other person must be racist or anything else, they've been told this their entire life. All right? So I'm going to give you an option of how nuclear you want me to go on this person. How nuclear you want me to go? Vex you're a FEMA nuclear all right, Mr.

[00:58:30]
John. All right, you lost your shit. All right, let's go over each it's a woman. It's a woman, first of all. Whatever.

[00:58:38]
At this point, I don't care. Miss Zhang all right, let me go over each of your things and break it down for you. First, you stated you started accusing square enix of racism because apparently to you, the depths. They believe Asianic people do not understand other races exist. And Asian creators can't develop media literacy about racism even if they have experienced it.

[00:59:03]
All right, here's the thing, all right?

[00:59:08]
They understand other races. They do. They live in Japan, all right? Go to Japan and you'll see real quick there isn't many races out there except for Japanese people in Japan. They're not required.

[00:59:26]
They have not lived the same life that you have, all right? And if you want to go into the game itself, one of the other things which I'm surprised you didn't put here was basically about how they think the game is racist because they want to keep it European because it's a European based story, all right? Now, here's the thing. You can't tell a story and then change all the facts about it, all right? They're trying to keep it as close to the original thing as possible.

[00:59:56]
They can't do that when they bow to the whim of the loudest minorities, all right? Now, I'm not saying minorities as in the minorities that they're talking about. I'm talking about the smallest amount of people who make the largest amount of noise, all right? They're going to complain regardless. And these are the same people, mind you.

[01:00:16]
These are the same people who would not play the game to begin with. All right? Then you went on to talk about how race is an important theme to any artist who wants to represent the full range of human experiences, regardless of whether they're American or Japanese. But here's the thing. You forget to remember the fact that he brought up how diverse of a cast it is and how each character has their own skill sets, their own backstory and their own personalities.

[01:00:43]
All right? You sit here and claim diversity, but here's the thing. You put all white people in the same category. Now, here's the thing. I'm Irish.

[01:00:54]
I'm 50% Irish. And if you were to tell me that you think I'm Scottish, those are fighting words, all right? The Irish and Scottish are not the same. Neither is the British. There is a whole bunch of different nationalities for so called white people, right?

[01:01:09]
So for saying that we're not being diverse simply because they're all, quote unquote, white people is racism itself because there are many different nationalities of white people. All right? Then you want to talk about how the developers of Final Fantasy XV are sensitive to racial and cultural differences outside of Japan and their choice to use English voice actors for an. Ancient European world. All right?

[01:01:37]
Nobody knows what the hell you're talking about because you've been talking out of your ass trying to make a mountain out of a mohill. All right? Anything you can do to create clicks is the only thing you are doing. All right? Let's be completely honest.

[01:01:51]
Nobody cares what you're saying. You work for Kotaku. Kotaku is well known to be just complete garbage. All right? The only people who listen to you are the people who are the lowest of the low.

[01:02:03]
All right? You go on to talk about inclusivity. You go on to talk about inclusivity which should be evaluated as seriously as we might consider technical elements such as graphics, cinematography, or the responsiveness of the controls. I'm sorry, are we playing a video game or the Woke Olympics 2022? Because here's the thing.

[01:02:28]
Everything that's gone woke has gone to shit because you all want to keep targeting things that you have no intention of buying anyways. So the actual fans of the franchise who are there for the storytelling and for the way that they tell the story, the way the game plays and all that other stuff no longer like the story. Because they listen to the loudest group of people who make up a very small portion of the population. They just scream the loudest. So they bow to their whims and they destroy the game for the actual fans.

[01:03:00]
Sit down. All right? Then you talk about how they can't expect Japanese debts to understand race and racism are necessarily made in good faith and say that it's an excuse that Japan is simply different. And you talk about it seems to extend it to all other forms of oppression. Well, first of all, Japan is different.

[01:03:20]
That's not something that expands to everything else. They have lived different lives, all right? They're not you. You lived your life sitting on a throne of lies talking about how everything that has ever happened to you that is bad had nothing to do with your own personal choices and everything to do with oppression, racism or anything else to take away responsibility for your own shitty actions. All right?

[01:03:48]
Then you talk about how white conservatives are terrified that they're losing hope in popular media, saying that we're looking for our own utopia, a place that excludes women and minorities. Alright? Bullshit. What we're looking for is for people not to race, swap everything, make everything go Woke and stuff for gaming and everything else, to just be left alone. Let people tell the story the way they want to.

[01:04:16]
And we don't care if there's women in it. We don't care if there's minorities in it. What we care about is that you give us a good story, a good game, good gameplay, whatever the case may be, all right? Give us substance, all right? That's what you guys are trying to get rid of.

[01:04:35]
You want to get rid of actual good content in place for this low garbage that never does. Well, if it's in any form of media, whether it's a video game, a movie, anything else, it always tanks. All right, sit down. All right. You talk about how white people, for some white people in Japan, is seen as an eternally, unchanging, conformist and traditional society where marginalized people know their place.

[01:05:02]
No, we see Japan as a country that learns how to respect each other, doesn't constantly attack each other. And when I say constantly respect each other, I'm talking about like their culture is different in the fact that they actually respect one another. They don't go out of their way to be annoying. All right, case in point. I'll give you a perfect example.

[01:05:24]
I'm on the bus coming home. There's rules for the bus that you're not supposed to be loud in music. You're not supposed to be talking to your phone, all that other shit. What do you think's happening? People have music blasting 24/7.

[01:05:37]
They're talking on the phone. They're being generally obnoxious. Go on a Japanese train and I'm going to tell you exactly what's going to happen. You're going to sit down and you're going to shut up. Because if you don't sit down and shut up, you want to know what happens?

[01:05:50]
I'll tell you exactly what happens. Everybody looks at you differently, and then you get kicked off the train because you want to be disrespectful to everything or everyone around you. All right? We look at Japan as one of the last few countries who actually cares about their fellow neighbors, whether they know them or not. They are, generally speaking, respectful.

[01:06:10]
Now, that doesn't mean there isn't crime. There is, but it's significantly lower than the United States of America. Significantly lower because of the way their culture is. Again, sit down. All right?

[01:06:27]
So I'm really tired of this extreme bias and how they put their unjustified world views on absolutely everything when in reality they don't have a clue what they are talking about because they've been fed lie after lie after lie, and they believe every little thing told to them. And they don't do any of their own research, because if they did any of their own research, they would realize, yeah, no, none of it holds up. All right. Oh, yeah, 100%. Now, mind you, that entire rant is 100% mean.

[01:07:02]
But I will say from my own personal perspective, I look at it like I'm tired of it. Because here's the thing, alright? I'm going to say this again. I'm going to go on a limb and say this right now. And this is from Lambda Sea, right?

[01:07:19]
Okay. I hate to break it to the so called social justice warriors that want to constantly talk about race and all this other shit and how everything is racist, but here's the thing. I didn't care about race until you started shoving it down my throat. And you're doing the opposite because you're doing the opposite of what you want. I'm going to tell you what's actually going to happen.

[01:07:39]
Within five or ten years, you're going to actually have people who hate anyone who is not of their own skin tone because of the way you are acting, because of the way you're calling us racist even when we're not. Instead of eliminating racism, you are creating racism. Ironic how that happens. Very. I don't think that is a stretch at all.

[01:08:05]
I agree with you in a lot of instances. And even if you just face value, you look at some of these, like, things that anti racist people are doing. They are in fact racist things. They painted it with a different brush is all. Right.

[01:08:21]
It's like that term, people of color. I don't know if this is going to get us banned if I say this or not, but it's the exact same term as colored people. You're saying the same thing. I hate to break it to you, but that's all you're doing. It's like vexes podcast.

[01:08:38]
Podcast of Vex.

[01:08:43]
It's still a racist term. All right? You deciding to make spaces that are only for black or brown people or making black only graduation ceremonies like some post secondary institutions I've been doing, is racist as a form of segregation. It's just going the other way. It's just quite funny how they claim they're antiracist but are doing racist things because you flip around and it was done to them, they'd be crying like crazy about how people are being racist, but it's okay for them to be racist.

[01:09:20]
Exactly. Right. So, yeah, let's leave that discussion there. But this is absolutely ridiculous. And like you said, it is making a mole a mountain out of a molehill.

[01:09:32]
Right? I'm going to leave it at this statement and stuff. Don't sit here and call people racist and in turn show your racism if you're going to call racist. If you're going to call someone racist, look in the mirror first.

[01:09:52]
For real, though, just to add one more point on this, I am a minority, quote unquote, right? I think I've only encountered one instance of racism that I can actually recall, and I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian area, and I was flyed. So the other instances of racism that I can recall that were more subtle were done by non white people.

[01:10:28]
Anyways. Back to Final Fantasy, though. So Final Fantasy was in the news for another reason as well. So there was a new advertisement that came out for the PlayStation Five dual Sense wireless controller, like some new features, right? And Final Fantasy was included in this.

[01:10:44]
And at the bottom of it, the disclaimer, it said, final Fantasy 16 anticipated summer 2023 PlayStation Five exclusive for six months. So a lot of people are like, oh, maybe Final Fantasy 16 is coming to Xbox. I think all that, to me, at least all it sounds like is since Final Fantasy has been predominantly a Sony IP. I think it's more likely it's one of those things that, oh, it'll be available for PlayStation Five exclusively to six months, and then there might be a PlayStation Four port or a PC port available on the PlayStation Plus service. Right.

[01:11:18]
I don't think it will likely do the same thing. Like some other death loop is done where it will come to Xbox later. That being said, I would be impressed if it did, because Final Fantasy has not had a strong following on the Xbox. So I would be pretty impressed if it goes that way at all. So, yeah, that caused a lot of a lot of hubbub for people.

[01:11:40]
But it is what it is. And there's a release window, summer 2023. We finally have a release window for it as well. So that's good news for Final Fantasy fans. Hi, Russia.

[01:11:52]
Sorry, I have a little kitty here. So, moving along, we had a couple of game announcements and developments. Actually made a shorter show than normal. There wasn't a whole lot this week. Eh?

[01:12:08]
Control Two, which was formerly known as code named Heron, will release for the PC, PlayStation Five and Series Xx sometime in the near future. It's being built by Remedy's Norfolk Engine, by Remedy Entertainment, and they have partnered with 505 games to publish it on the console platforms. Currently, the project is in the concept stage. That's why we don't have even a general release window. And this was all announced on Friday.

[01:12:36]
I've heard very good things about Control. I remember when this game first launched because it was an Xbox exclusive at first, and a lot of people said it was meh at best. But as the years have passed now I'm seeing a lot more people say, like, this actually deserved a lot more recognition than it did, and a lot of people did. Because of that appreciation. They kind of greenlit the second one into production.

[01:13:01]
Right. So since this launch back in 2019, control has sold over 3 million copies. I know it's on Xbox game pass, actually, still, and I've downloaded it to play after everything else. Oh, my God. I think I'm probably going to hit 20 games by the end of the year at the rate I'm going.

[01:13:20]
Hit me up. I might hit the magical number of one game. Finally. No. You know I'm always busy, and even when I'm on, Vex will tell you flat out we have each other on Xbox.

[01:13:37]
But Vex will tell you flat out, every time I'm on Xbox, I'm on crunchy roll. Because of the weekly anime recap. Exactly. So even when I'm on my Xbox, I'm not even playing Xbox. And I have a PlayStation Five, too.

[01:13:51]
I finally turned it on yesterday and stuff. And here's a funny thing. Take a while. Guess what I was doing updating it? No.

[01:14:00]
I was on crunchy roll. Two consoles. Double the crunchy. Double the crunchiness.

[01:14:10]
No it's just I think every time I go on vacation or go see Sharper down south, like I have the opportunity to play quite a few games. So I did a lot there and then actually, because I became much more of a variety gamer this past year than previous years. So some of those games, they're not all triple A title that will take you like 15 to 30 hours. Some of them are just smaller games that took me like less than 4 hours to complete. Right.

[01:14:37]
So I think that's the biggest reason why I have so many under my belt. And then other reasons are just me, like I did with Plaguedale, just deciding to stay up till four in the morning because we need to see if Hogwarts legacy has a multiplayer and stuff. Because if it does, then you'll be on I've pre ordered it. I know you have, but I'm saying, will you then be online to play games? I'm going to find time for that and stuff.

[01:15:04]
And here's the thing, I'm not even a Harry Potter fan. That game just looks absolutely mesmerizing. You sent me some gameplay. I haven't watched it yet because I just don't care for it. I sent it to you and still I haven't watched it myself.

[01:15:18]
There you go. It's like official gameplay of it. Okay. I'll still check it out because there is a lot of positive buzz about this game regardless, and I know it is very anticipated by just gamers in general, so I'll still check it out just for the sake of seeing what all the hubbub is about. So in other news, remember that a couple of months ago, Warner Brothers and oh gosh, it wasn't Comcast, was it?

[01:15:44]
Comcast? No. Oh God. It's a TV production company. Okay, well, basically, Warner Brothers decided to basically condense their studio just because the company has been hemorrhaging money over the last few years for basically what we covered not too long ago, all the woke shit that's going on over there and their disastrous decisions when it comes to movie making.

[01:16:07]
So in a global zoom meeting that was held for oh, Discovery there we go, warner Bros. Discovery employees. This past Thursday, CEO David Saslov introduced a new DC Studios chairman, CEO's James Gunn, who is the mastermind behind the Guardians of the Galaxy series. He directs those movies and he directed The Suicide Squad, which is the sequel to Suicide Squad and Peter Saffron. This actually marked the first appearance together in front of the company since being named to those posts back in late October.

[01:16:38]
The execs expressed their shared excitement for the new structure with Zaslav mentioning how the plan is to build a bible for a cohesive DC universe. One that here's the relation, one that is overarching across live action films, TV, animation, gaming and more. So remember when all this merger was happening a few months ago? They said that the gaming part of warner brothers wouldn't be touched. But even then I remember I said, no, they're likely going to change this if everything else is undergoing restructuring.

[01:17:10]
And here we have it. So I think in the throughout 2023, we're going to see a pretty big restructuring of what Warner Brothers game division is doing and producing. And on top of that, I think we might end up seeing an employee crunch as well, just given how much money the company has been hemorrhaging. Plus, we also had Rocksteady, which is a studio under Warner Brothers. We had their two CEOs and founders leave just last week.

[01:17:38]
So it wouldn't surprise me if there are going to be big things happening there. And slightly related sad news though. Kevin Conroy, who is actually the voice actor for Batman for the Animated Series and several of the games, did unfortunately pass away this past Friday after a short battle with cancer at just the age of 66. Rested Priest kevin, I saw a lot of people on Twitter, we're very upset about that. And he meant quite a bit to a lot of people that are hardcore Batman fans, right, very young.

[01:18:09]
Not just Batman fans. Also like the voice acting community as a whole. I found out not because of anything you responded to or anything else like that. I first found out because Tara Strong posted about it, which I've spoken about Tara Strong before. That was the image I showed you.

[01:18:27]
I'm like, you may not know who she is, but you know her voice. And I showed you that image, she posted about it. And I was like, oh damn. So rest in peace to this legend. He gave a lot of joy to a lot of people, right.

[01:18:44]
In other development news, though, during a recent appearance on the Skill Up podcast, matt Booty, who is the head of Xbox Game Studios. I know every time. I guess I know that's every time. But he gave us a little bit of insight into the upcoming Fable reboot, which is pulling talent from all across the industry at this point. But we had some unfortunate news come out in relation to that because he said that the Fable reboot will be brought forward for today's sensibilities and be a modern take.

[01:19:19]
Great. So you're going to take an absolute legend of the game and turn the garbage. Thank you. Pretty much. And this will actually be the first entry in Fable since 2012 which saw Fable the Journey come out.

[01:19:36]
Right. So we don't even have a general release window for this game either. I know that the Xbox roadmap does have it coming out in the near future because they do have that there. But it'll be 2024 at the earliest. But that is a shame right there.

[01:19:53]
So I guess, I'm sorry, Fabled fans. I mean, hopefully it's not going to be that bad, but let's see what happens, right? Prince of Persia remake fans also got some bad news this week.

[01:20:06]
The remaster, which was announced prematurely back in September 2020, has now no definitive release window at all. It's just put on indefinite hold and as a result, Ubisoft is refunding preorders for it. In a quote from Ubisoft, it said, the game is currently in development at Ubisoft Montreal. There are currently no plans to remake any Prince of Persia title. Sorry.

[01:20:31]
This is Prince of Persia. Stands of time. That was the one getting remade, which makes sense given the difficulty they've had delivering this one. This has been pushed back quite a few times too. And even when it was announced back in 2020, all we literally got was a teaser and that's it.

[01:20:47]
We have nothing about the development cycle. This also explains why we never have seen we didn't see any update on it at Ubisoft Florida back in September because I don't think Ubisoft knows what the fuck they're doing with this anymore. They started it and it's just kind of there at this point. And the development even itself. What we do know is, yes, now it's handled by Ubisoft Montreal, but there had been instances where it was being handled by the Ubisoft studio in India for a time.

[01:21:18]
So who knows who's got their hands in this anymore. But at least you're getting your money back if you did preorder it our final piece. Final nail in the coffin for this week as well. EA is dropping the Project Cars franchise, which was first reported by game industry biz earlier this week. So Slightly Mad Studios, which developed the series and was launched back in 2015, along with EA, confirmed earlier this week that they will stop further development and investment in the franchise.

[01:21:48]
It did see a sequel, Project Cars Two, which came out, I think, in 2019. I believe both games were met with pretty average reception. In all honesty, I think it's pretty hard to break into the racing simulator game these days. Like to like the high quality standard, at least when you have franchises like Grand, Turisma and Forza already being the reigning kings. Right.

[01:22:13]
So slightly. Mad Studios does employ about 150 people. It's unclear about what's going to happen to all those employees. I think, given that EA is kind of they've got some new deals and some pretty big titles in the works, those employees will all probably be distributed to other development studios within EA. So to wrap up the show, though, this is just funny news.

[01:22:38]
That's all.

[01:22:42]
Pull up the picture. Basically, everyone's making a gaming chair. And McDonald said, fuck it, let's make a gaming chair too. It's called the McCrispy. It's ugly, but I want it.

[01:22:55]
This is actually the same thing because of exclusivity. Why don't we start off by how many there is made? Because then maybe people will understand why even though it's ugly, both of us want it. Exactly.

[01:23:12]
This is the prize in McDonald's Facebook competition, which launched on November 7, and there's only four in the entire world, which is why we both want one because we'd have half of them in the world, right? Exactly. So along with the black and yellow design you see on the street, looks like a freaking bumblebee. It does. It really does.

[01:23:35]
It also has the crispy just printed sporadically across on the yellow parts of the letter. There's also a giant M symbol on the back headrest for the McDonald's symbol, isn't there? It comes complete with a fries holder to dip holders and a burger heat zone to keep your MCSP warm. The leather is also grease resistance, so there's no need to worry about proof resistance, right? So you don't have to worry about spills or stains while you're gaming.

[01:24:04]
A testament to how far we've fallen as a nation, but still something I want regardless. For those who want to eat while gaming, we offer you I warn you, it does not come complete with a Mccrospy sandwich. You still got to go to McDonald's to get food to put in those fries. They had to go. They could DoorDash it.

[01:24:30]
Oh, my God, we're so lazy. My God. Our ancestors would be appalled by us if they could see where we are now, for fuck's sake. I'm appalled. And I'm appalled, and I grew up even as a teen, I'm looking at things that happened since I was a teen, and I'm just like, how do we get this lazy?

[01:24:54]
Now people are complaining on social media about have to work entire shifts. I saw a video of this Starbucks barista who basically said, here I am at work at 06:00 A.m. Making this customer's smoothie and stuff because he's a grown man and couldn't make one himself. I'm sorry for making you do your job. It's ridiculous.

[01:25:24]
I agree with you. Too many things happen to make life a little too comfortable. And here we are. Right? So that's all I have in gaming news for this week.

[01:25:35]
It was a bit of a lighter week, unfortunately, so that's why our podcast is a bit shorter than normal for those of you that are either tuning in live or listening to the re upload on our streaming services. But yeah, so I guess if you want, check out that Plague Tale Requiem review on the website www.llamasychow.com. Like I said, I also have a recap of everything I've played this year so far, which you'll be dropping at the very end of this year on December 31. So far there are 13 games on that list, and I have plans to play at least four more before the year ends, and that's not including any other games I might come across, so keep your eyes peeled for that. I think the next game I'll end up doing a review for will probably gun Grave Gore.

[01:26:29]
Like I mentioned, that's dropping on November 22, and that will be on Game Pass too, so that will be really easy access for me. I'm really excited for that one. They dropped another trailer for it earlier this week and I'm so ready to see that franchise come back. So ready.

[01:26:46]
You have a podcast with Mikey tomorrow, right? The Anime Recap weekly Anime Recap So that will be episode twelve of that. Yeah, it's funny. This is episode twelve of this week in gaming and tomorrow's the 12th episode of the weekly Anime Recap. We're coming along.

[01:27:02]
We're definitely coming along and we're constantly improving and talks about I am in talks trying to get more people to interview. I think we might have John Reeves live back on that's. Great. So that'll be nice. For those who are interested and who would like to possibly be interviewed for the show, we do have over on the limbiceshow.com a guest form area where you can fill out a guest form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

[01:27:31]
Now, I am going to call the series the Creator Spotlight series. However, it's not just going to be like creators who are like creators on YouTube, Twitch, all that other stuff. It's going to be anyone who has something to tell. If you have a good story, feel free to drop in an application or drop in a guest form and we'll get back to you and stuff. I'm going to touch up on everything.

[01:28:03]
I don't care if you have a million followers. I don't care if you have zero followers and stuff. Give me a good story. Give not just us a good story, give our audience a good story. Let us hear a good story.

[01:28:18]
We would love to hear it. But that being said though, we've now reached the point where we are going to raid out and it's looking like I really wish he would have spelled Joy differently and stuff, but we're going to raid Curious Joy who is currently playing Gotham Knights and it looks like she has a little bit of an audience. So let's go read her and show him some love. That being said, that at the end of to this podcast. We hope you guys enjoy this podcast and until next time, enjoy yourself.

[01:28:53]
Ta every ta.